The Religious Value of Language between the Sacred and the Holy

Abstract

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, language undoubtedly constituted a strong topic of philosophical interest both in Eastern Europe and in the West. Following in particular Florensky’s conception of speech and language as living organisms structured in an antinomic way, we come to grasp their fundamental symbolic meaning. According to a gradual development of increasing semantic depth, the symbolism rises from a common word to a poetic-religious word, which sings of the splendour of the Saint. Likewise, language and poetry are for Heidegger fundamental forms of the event of being and of his truth, which manifests itself as sacred. Here then is the need for a basic decision to emerge, between the inevitable uncertainty due to the concealment of the sacred, and a possible apophaticism which, without exhausting its Essence, knows it can name the Saint.